2024 GOC Workshop Presenters & Descriptions

Session One – Thursday, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Session 1A Workshop Title: Shamanic Drumming Journey

Presenter: Mike Andrews

Description: Mike will facilitate a journey to the Upper or Lower Worlds. Participants will have an opportunity to process their experiences if they choose to do so. It is anticipated that there will be time to do two journeys during the workshop.

The sacred pow wow drum Tehelati (praise) will be called upon to help strengthen, guide and enhance your experience and safe journey. She will be attended by Steve Lake and Chris Monroe.

Bio: Mike Andrews, Three Bears, has been attending the GOC for 30 years and leading Bear Heart Vision Quests for 20 years. He has been doing Shamanic Drumming Journeys since 1990, studying with Charles Conatser and Angeles Arrien. Shamanic Journeying was one of his earliest spiritual practices as it allows people to directly experience the world of Spirits.

Session 1B Workshop Title: Learn to Play the Native American Flute

Presenter: Gary Kendrick

Description: Hello GOC peoples. Again this year while gathering in the sacred mountains of Southern New Mexico we will be having a flute workshop. I am not a musician and mostly a self-taught player and have been playing the Native American Flute from the heart for 25 plus years. This workshop has been presented several times and I hope some previous participants return to share a song and tell your story.

This will be a two-hour workshop primarily for beginning flute players, but all levels are welcome.  The agenda is laid out below but is flexible to the needs of the group. 

Agenda

  • Introductions and stories.
  • A brief history of the Native American or North American Flute.
  • Written materials with information and fingering charts will be provided.
  • To facilitate this workshop and simplify instruction a Northern Spirits A-minor flute is provided for you to use.  If you wish to keep the flute please make a ten dollar or more donation to the GOC.  This money goes directly to the GOC general fund and is used to help fund the event.
  • Fundamentals of playing the NAF with practice play-alongs and individual instruction.
  • I would like the group to learn the classic Zuni Sunrise song or the Cherokee Morning Song. You will have the finger charts and time to practice.  On Sunday morning at sunrise, we will gather at the main circle to play this as a group. 
  • Throughout the GOC I will be available to you for practice, additional instruction, or just hanging out.  You are welcome to come by my camp anytime for practice and coffee or tea.

Bio: I have been playing the Native American Flute for over 20 years and taught this workshop at the GOC in 2018.  I approach the playing of the flute from the heart.  I am not a musician, do not read music, and play no other instruments.  Hopefully I can share my experience in such a way that others can learn and find their own voice within this most wonderful of instruments.

Session Two – Thursday, 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Session 2A Workshop Title: Creativity Unlimited

Presenter: Cathy Martin

Description: Connecting with your creative self allows you to truly share your gifts with others. This experiential workshop focuses on sparking your creativity through music, drumming, singing, and movement. It will incorporate “props” from Cathy’s musical “Lovespell.” The workshop includes using a parachute as a group activity to “raise the vibration of Love” to promote self-growth and build community.

Bio: Cathy has participated in the GOC since 1995. She has been a counselor since 1984 and has also trained in many alternative healing modalities over the years. She has presented numerous trainings over her 40 years as a counselor, therapist, and songwriter. She produced the musical “Lovespell,” as well as the CD “Sea of Light – only Love prevails.” Website: http://cathymartin.org

Session 2B Workshop Title: Song Alchemy & Crystal Connection

Presenter: Gabrielle Rose

Description: My goal of this workshop is to assist everyone to feel more grounded and connected within themselves, to Mother Earth, and to receive loving, healing energies and experience peace. To begin the workshop, I will invite everyone to choose a crystal from either the selection I bring, or from your own personal collection that you would like to connect deeper with during the meditation. I will then share the embodied wisdom I have gained while working with crystals over the years, help everyone to tune into the crystal’s frequency and discover how it is assisting you personally. I will lead everyone through a guided meditation to root into the earth, cleanse the chakras and auric field, and receive healing energies while I use my crystal bowls.  I will sing with the bowls, allowing everyone to deepen in the meditation (sitting up or laying down), and once complete, bring everyone back fully into their bodies and offer time to share reflections and ask questions.

Bio: Gabrielle Angelica Rose is an Angelic Reiki Master, Pranic Healer and Psychic Surgeon, a new gift that has come online through her travels and medicine journeys the past few years. An initiated Sophianic Priestess, she sings Light Language while channeling hand mudras to clear densities and align the energy bodies, creating a vortex of powerfully transformative healing.  

She works closely with the Crystal Kingdom in her sessions and also creates phenomenally healing crystal manifestation grids worldwide, anchoring Divine Love into the leylines of the earth as guided by Spirit.  Gabrielle also offers for adoption the crystal friends that volunteer to share their light and helps teach others how to benefit from working with crystalline consciousness.

Session Three – Thursday, 7 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Session 3 Workshop Title: Peruvian Moon Ceremony

Presenter: Athena Wolf

Description: The Peruvian Moon Ceremony helps us to tune our psyche and bodies with the cycles of Nature. Through this ceremony close to the new moon, you will plant the seeds of your becoming and call in the spirits of the mountains as guardians and nurturers with the huaco silbadores. You can read more about this at curanderahealing.com

Bio:  Vaidya, Athena Wolf, has been practicing Ayurveda and curanderismo full-time for twenty years, helping people heal from chronic disease, using energy work, herbs, diet, and other methods and offering healing ceremonies for the community. She apprenticed with a Peruvian shamanic tradition; and with Weremay Kachora, medicine man of the Yaquis in Tecate, Mexico (curanderismo). For 26 years she lived in an ashram studying Ayurveda with Yogi Bhajan, Dr. Shom and Vaidya, Vasant Lad. 

Working with Spirit and Nature through the international school for healers known as Escuela de Curanderismo, she helps others heal themselves and our world. 

Session Four – Friday, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Session 4 Workshop Title: Story Telling Time with Grandma Coyote

Presenter: Grandma Coyote

Description: Join us for an enriching workshop led by Emma Ortega, also known as Grandma Coyote, an indigenous storyteller rooted in the ancient oral traditions of tribal storytelling. Drawing from her deep experience in transforming real-life experiences into engaging and educational narratives, Grandma Coyote will skillfully guide participants in honing their storytelling abilities. Don’t miss this opportunity to delve into the art of storytelling with a seasoned storyteller who brings history and education to life through the magic of storytelling.

Bio: I am a storyteller in San Antonio,Texas and my ancestors are the Lipan Apache and Carrizo Comecrudo people. The lands of my ancestors are located at what is now known as South Texas and West of San Antonio/Austin across the beautiful Texas hill country. My verbal and material art forms are filled with the lessons of my ancestors and taught to me by my mother & friends. I take materials from around the world and assemble pieces from my own cultural and spiritual perspective. I would like people to know that stories have many lessons. There are lessons that speak directly to us and some that are waiting to be discovered. My artwork represents these lessons that I have found and continue to find. This is the inspiration for my artwork that I am privileged to pass on to future generations.

*Photo Credit: American Indians of the Spanish Colonial Missions